There’s a very good reason John McCain and Mitt Romney have been fighting like crazy for every last ounce of support in Florida: today’s Republican presidential primary has the potential to fundamentally change the nature of the race. Josh Marshall notes today:
[A] largely unremarked factor here is how the Republicans have chosen to structure this race. Most of the Republican races — including Florida and I think all the Super Tuesday states — are winner take all. Romney could be in contention everywhere. But if McCain can get a plurality of the vote McCain gets all the delegates. And of course vice versa.
Add to this that at least for the moment, McCain seems to be ahead in most of the Super Tuesday states. Not everywhere. But seemingly in the big ones. I think if McCain wins tonight there will be a big media boomlet for him. He’ll get a week of crazy press. And I think Romney will have a hard time overcoming McCain’s leads in a ton of states if he couldn’t manage it in this one state of Florida. And remember the all important winner-take-all factor. Close in a lot of states isn’t good enough for Mitt.
And he knows it.
This may seem hard to believe — I certainly found it surprising — but the “Tsunami Tuesday” races, featuring 21 Republican primaries and caucuses, are exactly one week away, and this huge field of GOP candidates hasn’t advertised at all in any of these states.
As they fight for momentum on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have also spent the past week-and-a-half dueling it out on the airwaves in multiple Super Tuesday states, to the tune of $2.5 to 3 million each.
The outcome of the Republican contest may be just as uncertain – but no GOP candidate is currently on the air in any of the 21 states that will weigh in on their party’s presidential nomination next Tuesday.
“They made a gamble that someone would have momentum,” says Evan Tracey of TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, with tracks campaign ad spending. “But no one has captured it. They’re all looking to see what happens in Florida today.”
When Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that the winner of the Republicans’ Florida primary would likely be the GOP nominee, it was arguably the single most sensible thing he’s said as a presidential candidate.
There’s been plenty of talk about Giuliani betting the farm on Florida, but these reports point at the rest of the story: he’s not the only one. McCain figures a Florida victory will effectively knock out the competition, and he can ride a wave of media spin and high name-ID right through to the nomination. Romney figures a Florida victory will produce exactly the kind of boomlet that he can parlay into Feb. 5 success.
They’ve all put their eggs in the Florida basket, leaving those who come up short in a tough spot.
So, who’s likely to win the Sunshine State? Your guess is as good as mine. There have been eight polls released over the last 48 hours. Three of the eight show McCain with a narrow lead; four show Romney with a narrow lead; and one said they were tied.
My hunch is that McCain will eke out a victory — his support from Charlie Crist, Mel Martinez, and the state GOP establishment should be worth a couple of percentage points — and if he does, that’s 57 delegates added to his total, which is more than he’s collected in the first six contests combined.
The one other angle to consider, though, is that McCain and Romney are almost certain to finish in the top two, which, as a practical matter, should make this a two-person race. Indeed, it may even literally make it a two-person race.
I mention this because, if the Limbaugh/DeLay/conservative netroots wing of the party is seriously going to prevent McCain from getting the nomination, they’ll have exactly one other choice and six days to stop what may ultimately be inevitable.